The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1887-04-15

make our law life endurable up there
at the Hotel Christol.''
In the draw.ng-room of our hotel
my friend told me the story of poor
Jacopo: Four years previous to the
events herein narrated, Jacopo was
left an orphan, together with his only
sister Claire. Both belonged to the
Haute Vile that frowns down upon us
up there as if in its pride of age it
scorned this plebeian Bas Vile. They
became so attached to each other that
they were inseparable, and the neigh
bors loved them for their beauty, their
innocence and their affection. The
children wandered hand in hand for
hours through the quiet old town. At
times they were found playing among
the sand accumulated in front of the
Porte Dune, with its grim and heavy
port utilised gate; at Others they
played in front of the queer little house
where Godfrey de Bouillon, the first
CRUSADER King of Jeruselum. a thou
sand years ago was born; but above all
they loved to stroll through the cathe-
dral, gazing with awe at every thing
the great gold candles, the splendid
affairs, the valuable pictures of Christ
and the Mother of Sorrows, the blue
spangled arched roof with the yellow
stars, and the gruesome offerings made
by patients who have been cured of
maladies by persistent appeals to some
favorite saint. They even spent
hours among the crypts, where endless
tombs and a few slots in the damp,
bare walls made every thing look so
weird and systematically solemn that,
except in the daytime, not even the
brayest of the residents of the Haute
Vile would venture among them.
These children, however, were too in
nocent to know fear. And so they
went along together hand in hand
through the grass-grown old streets of
Godfrey's birthplace.
But one day Claire died. She was
blonde and Jacopo was dark. At first
the child Jacopo could not understand
what had become of his beloved sister.
He saw her little body strewn with
fresh-cut flowers and the chaplet of
snow-white flowers that surrounded
her marble brow where the yellow silk
hair strayed down freest. He touched
her face and cried: "Claire, ma
Claire, why do you not speak TO me?
1t is only me, little brother Jacopo"
And when no answer came from the lit
tie dead body, his paroxysms of grief
became so violent that the good-heart-
ed neighbors said he would surely kill
himself, and carried him away.
One day the now utterly forlorn child
was walking, half sobbing, through
narrow old street, where queer gabled
houses cast fantastic shadows along the
almost forsaken thoroughfare, and no
sound disturbed the silence but the
praise-singing of some pious sister in
one of the converts that abound in the
Haute Vile, when vicious young man,
known as LIE Salvage" approached
Jacopo and laughed and TESTED at him
for his weeping for mere girl.
"You ought to be girl yourself. If
you want to find Claire, why do you
not go down to the crypt of the Cathe-
dral at midnight, and then you will
find your sister?'
The child looked up with his large
dark eyes flashing with the light of ex-
pectation.
"And shall truly find ma chere
Claire there?" Jacopo asked.
"Of course you will, you little fool"
said the savage, as he ran off down one
of the ghostly streets of old Bologne.
On that same night the fat old sac
ristan of the Cathedral was aroused
from his slumbers by hearing shrill
cries issuing from somewhere in the
great edilice. The hour was midnight.
Father Hildebrand crossed himself,
commended himself to the protection
of the Holy Mother, and, triply armed
in his faith, proceeded to search for
the cause of the mysterious sounds. AS
his football echoed and re-echoed
through the lonely aisles his soul be-
came troubled with strange fears.
What if it were thieves breaking into
the church to rob it OF its sacred treas
ures? What if-and the thought made
him shudder-it were some manifesta-
ton from another world? But Father
Hildebrand crossed himself anew and
went on with renewed strength of pur-
pose. At last he reached the end of
the great cloister and felt sure he
heard the sobs and cries of a child.
Advancing cautiously, shading his
candle carefully with one hand, he
swept past the different tomos. Then
he saw sight which arrested his fur.
Their progress for a minute. In front
of u great ancestral family tomb
stood weeping child with its hands
clasped and held up toward the shaft
of moonlight which pierced through
one of the narrow Sits in the thick
stone wall and shone full upon the
boys face as he walled: "Ma CLAIRE,
ma Claire, ma Sgur, why do you not
come to me when | call? 1t is only
me, little Jacopo! o, do not be unkind
to your petit trerer' The child at last
sank upon his knees, swayed for a few
seconds and then fell heavily on the
damp stone squares. When Father
Hildebrand reached the boy-for, Of
course, it was poor little Jacopo-s
shaft of moonlight was shining or
his face like q stream of glory sent
from Heaven. No need to tell the rest
Jacopo had only tainted, but it was
mans months before he arose from a
fever, during which his black clusters
of hair had turned pure white. He re-
covered, but never could say word
about the events of that terrible night.
All he could cry was: "Clajre! ma
CLAIRE" Father Hildebrand took care
of the poor child. Not only had
Jacopo's hair turRed white, but his
quiet, steady blue eyes glistened with a
light unknown to sunlight; it was the